Editor’s note: This article has been updated (05/18/2019).
The Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University in Washington, D.C., hosted its first annual National Antiracist Book Festival on April 27, 2019. Organized by National Book Award-winner Ibram X. Kendi, the festival featured nearly 50 authors, including African-American Christians Jemar Tisby and Austin Channing Brown.
“It was extremely significant that Dr. Kendi extended this invitation to myself and … Brown,” said Tisby, author of The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism. “It speaks to the importance of religion — specifically, Christianity — to this work of antiracism. We will not make significant racial progress in this country unless we are speaking to Christians and translating the language of antiracism into church contexts.”